Tarantula Nebula

Tarantula Nebula, as seen from the Hubble Telescope

 

Yesterday I talked about the story of Adam and Eve in terms of metaphor. The metaphor of leav­ing the gar­den of bliss­ful igno­rance to become fully human. Today, I’m think­ing about how much we’re drawn back to the idea of that bliss­ful igno­rance, from West to East, from ancient to mod­ern beings. Many of us, whether or not we sub­scribe to any sacred text, orga­nized reli­gion, or group of reli­gious beliefs, still find our­selves drawn to the idea of becom­ing at one with the all. Merging, blend­ing, fus­ing with the All. In a sense, we seek a loss of con­scious­ness, a loss of dis­cern­ment between this and that, now and then, before and after, and all oppo­sites. We want an end to dis­crim­i­na­tion, to the neces­sity of choos­ing, dif­fer­en­ti­at­ing, sin­gling out. We seek an end to fore­ground and back­ground and want Cezannesque plains, bleed­ing into Rothko-​​like envel­op­ment. Be it for a moment, a trance, a truce, or the final spac­ing out, we seek a return of sorts to that moment in the gar­den when we merely lived in the moment with­out con­scious­ness of our place within the ancient nexus.

There are, of course, many shades and degrees and lev­els to all of this. On both sides of the ledger. There are many para­doxes involved as well. Perhaps the tough­est to get around is the desire to be both uncon­scious and con­scious of that loss at the same time. To be free of all demands and require­ments involv­ing choice and dis­cern­ment and the aware­ness of that, while being aware of our spac­ing out into non-​​awareness. For how can we enjoy the loss of aware­ness if we don’t .… well, you get the picture.

A return to that gar­den in a state fully human would mean some­thing quite dif­fer­ent from our expul­sion from that same gar­den after sud­denly dis­cov­er­ing our­selves, becom­ing con­scious of our­selves. We would go back with the knowl­edge gained from thou­sands of years of civ­i­liza­tion, along with bil­lions of years in our DNA. As Rilke said, there would be no place that couldn’t see us. Our Freudian guardians would be watch­ing too, from below the sur­face of the ice-​​cold waters. We would no longer be burst­ing forth into our cre­ative selves for the first time, but going back with infi­nitely more on our shoulders.

That man from Asheville would be right in a cos­mic sense. Perhaps in a comic sense, as well.

There are small ways to go part of the way back, how­ever. There is music, dance, love, mak­ing love, singing, becom­ing one with the crowd at a con­cert, a sport­ing event, a polit­i­cal rally. There are walks along the strand, at mid­night, with the wind and the waves crash­ing into us, and the seag­ulls laugh­ing, and the mem­o­ries pulling us harder than the strongest moon. There are the tastes and smells made famous by Huysmans and Proust, which draw us deeply into the past as we lose the present. There is the laugh­ter of a child to send us back yet again to an ear­lier time when we, too, laughed in inno­cence and with aban­don — laughed at the sim­plest things, at the sight of pack­ages being unwrapped and paper float­ing in the air. Just floating.

But that’s not quite there, not quite. Something more dras­tic must be done to take us back to the gar­den. All the way back. Something that takes years of intense prac­tice and daily sac­ri­fice, if we want to avoid arti­fi­cial means. Or the last leap.

 

When peo­ple see some things as beau­ti­ful,
other things become ugly.
When peo­ple see some things as good,
other things become bad.

Being and non-​​being cre­ate each other.
Difficult and easy sup­port each other.
Long and short define each other.
High and low depend on each other.
Before and after fol­low each other.

Therefore the Master
acts with­out doing any­thing
and teaches with­out say­ing any­thing.
Things arise and she lets them come;
things dis­ap­pear and she lets them go.
She has but doesn’t pos­sess,
acts but doesn’t expect.
When her work is done, she for­gets it.
That is why it lasts forever.

 

From the Tao Te Ching, by Lao-​​tzu. Translated by Stephen Mitchell.

 

Consciousness of: Our way out of the gar­den. The non-​​contrived emp­ty­ing of con­scious­ness: Our way back.

 

 

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